the unsung heroines of sports history

I LOVE you PARIS -
The first women's football teams in France had very different origins to
their counterparts in Britain. Whereas the latter were predominantly
factory-based, and the players exclusively working-class, the earliest
teams in France were formed within pre-existing sports clubs based in
Paris, and several of the players were accomplished athletes. The first of
these was organised by the club Fémina Sport 2. This was founded in July
1912 by Pierre Payssé, the Olympic All-Round Gymnastics champion at the
1906 Games in Athens. The first matches were confined to members of the
club, as there were at the time no other women's teams to play against.
These were followed by matches against school boy teams. Fémina won only
one of these, drawing another two. Male-dominated sports associations were
unwilling to allow women's organisations to federate, and in consequence
they founded their own multi-sport governing body, La Fédération des
Sociétés Féminines et Sportives de France" (FSFSF) in January 1918.
One of the mixed games, against Lycée Carnot on 17th February 1918, was
attended by representatives from a number of women's clubs and societies
who were interested in forming teams of their own. The first such club to
follow the example of Fémina was En Avant, also based in Paris. In general,
these encounters were sparsely-attended, receiving almost no coverage in
the French press. Only one magazine, L'Auto, gave limited accounts. The
first exhibition of women's football before a crowd of any size was a
30-minute match played as a warm-up to a France-Belgium international on
21st April 1918. The formation of new clubs was initially a slow process,
and as a result the first ever French women's championship, organized in
1919 by the FSFSF, involved only two clubs - Fémina Sport and En Avant. The
title was played for over two legs: Fémina won the first 2-0, and the
second was a 0-0 draw. Via Donmouth #iloveyouparis #butchhistory